Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas compared Israeli rhetoric to Nazi propaganda, demanded Israel be suspended from the UN if it does not grant Palestinians a state and a “right of return” for millions of refugees, and denied Jewish ties to the Temple Mount during a speech at UN Headquarters in New York on Monday.
Abbas was speaking at the UN General Assembly’s first-ever commemoration of the “Nakba,” Arabic for “catastrophe” and the Palestinian term for Israel’s creation.
Israel harshly opposed the event marking the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, calling it a “distortion of history,” and said it had convinced dozens of other countries to boycott the commemoration.
Abbas, wearing a key on his lapel symbolizing a planned return to his family’s former home in Israel, said Israel had agreed to a Palestinian state in 1947 and had agreed to the return of Palestinian refugees to join the UN. The Jews in the UK’s Mandatory Palestine accepted the UN’s two-state solution at the time, but the Arab world rejected it and launched the 1948 War of Independence.
“Forcing Israel to implement these two resolutions was a condition, a prerequisite for their membership in the UN at the time, however, sadly, certain countries, we all know who we are talking about… have obstructed deliberately the implementation of these resolutions in a practice that undermines justice, ethics, and human values,” Abbas said, speaking at the UN for an hour, though he had been allotted 30 minutes for his speech.
“We demand today, officially, in accordance with international law and international resolutions, to make sure that Israel respects these resolutions, or suspend Israel’s membership from the UN,” he said.
The immediate establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, and the right to return for all refugees and their descendants, are non-starters for Israel, which views both moves as threats to its existence.
Abbas specifically blamed the UK and US for the Nakba and Israel’s establishment.
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